Family Day | It’s Alive!, MCA Chicago, April 12, 2025. Photo: Natasha Moustache, © MCA Chicago.
About the Event
Make yourself big and make yourself little, play with perspective and scale. Join us for a smaller-than-usual Family Day while the rest of the museum opens a new exhibition.
Designed for children under 12 and their grown-ups, MCA Family Days invite our youngest visitors to be the museum’s artists, thinkers, and collaborators.
Mini Film Fest
THE KITCHLETS:
Mina lives alone in her apartment, accompanied by three little house spirits, the Kitchlets, who feed off her positive emotions and take care of her negative ones.
Director’s Statement:
This film originates from places of uncertainty in oneself. The Kitchlets were created based on many mythologies around the world that cover the idea of house spirits. It made me wonder about how peoples and cultures (from the Greeks to the Koreans) think about entities that look after us in our own homes. The Kitchlets represent the many forces around us who cohabit the spaces we are most comfortable in. As we go through our darker moments, it is up to us to choose how we embrace these forces.
HOOP DREAMS:
Savannah’s fear of speaking in front of her 5th-grade class leads her to steal her mother’s gold hoop earrings, believing that their magic will help her overcome it. Ultimately, they transport her to a world beyond her wildest imagination, and a realization that she already had the power she needed right within her.
SER SEMILLA:
A group of witches struggle with the increasing violence in their town. Women are disappearing.
Accessibility Information
ASL interpretation is provided at this event. To request additional accessibility services, please contact us at [email protected] or 312-397-4076.
About the Artists
Originally from Singapore, Clarisse Chua studied at Tama Art University in Tokyo and graduated from California Institute of the Arts in 2020 from the Character Animation program. Since 2020 she has been working at Skydance Animation Studios as a story artist. Outside of work, Chua writes and directs her own animated films. She has been a BAFTA Connect Member and her work has been semi-finalists for the Student Academy Awards. Her films have also won awards and have been presented at film festivals internationally, including Chicago International Children’s Film Festival, the Animation Block Party in New York, BFI Future Film Festival, Seoul Indie AniFest, and the Bucheon International Animation Film Festival.
“I dance and draw, draw while dancing, but mostly, I make drawings dance.” Julia Granillo is a Mexican director/animator/illustrator/choreographer constantly mesmerized by movement and all of its possibilities. Her films have been selected in an array of international festivals such as Annecy, FICM, La Semaine de la Critique, GIFF, Animafest Zagreb, Tricky Women, etc. In 2025 her film Ser Semilla was nominated for the Ariel Award (AMACC) for Best Animated Short film. She completed her BA at Bennington College (USA), where she studied the concept “Emotion through Motion” through the disciplines of Animation and Dance. She graduated with honors from two Animation Master Degrees, first from LUCA School of Art (Brussels) with her film Tonalli and her dissertation “The Importance of Representation in Animation- with a focus on Latin American women,” later, as part of the RE:Anima EMJMD program (Belgium, Finland, Portugal), with her film Ser Semilla. In 2023 she cofounded Taller Menea an animation studio in Mexico City; she currently works there and as a freelancer.
Kasey Elise Walker is a Black American writer, director, and actress from Los Angeles. She began her career in front of the camera before discovering a deeper passion for storytelling, which led her to co-write and star in The Dispute. The short screened out of competition at Sundance and SXSW in 2019, was named Short of the Week, earned a Vimeo Staff Pick, and was later acquired by Riley Keough’s Felix Culpa and Donald Glover’s Gilga for feature development, with producers Gina Gammell (War Pony), Sacha Ben Harroche (Sound of Metal), and Fam Udeorji (Atlanta). In 2021, Walker won the Soho Script Lab with her short Hoop Dreams, marking her directorial debut. The film went on to premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2022. Most recently, she was selected for the 2025 Sundance Institute Screenwriters Lab and Directors Lab, received the Breakthrough Focus Features Fellowship, and presented her work at the Gotham Week Project Market, CineMart Rotterdam, and the Berlinale Co-Production Market. Her work is grounded in character-driven storytelling, exploring identity, intimacy, and emotional truth.
Funding
Support for Family Programs is provided in part by the MCA Women’s Board Family Education Initiative, Northern Trust, and Peoples Gas Community Fund at The Chicago Community Fund.
